Page:The Talisman.pdf/48

100 played nicely upon your excited state of mind. I hope you mean to dispute the payment of the bond?" A loud noise in the passage interrupted their conversation. They say gravity is the centre of attraction; I rather think that noise is. Nothing so soon assembles the inhabitants of a house as a loud and sudden noise: it did so in the present instance. "For the love of God, run for a surgeon; he is quite senseless!" And the first thing the friends saw was Mr. Greaves and the servant raising the body of the auctioneer. Charles, faint and trembling, grasped the bannisters: Scott sprang forward. "The whole College of Physicians can do him no good: he has broken his neck!" "Do you now doubt," exclaimed Charles, "my fatal power? Behold how, within the last minute, the skin has shrunk!" "Your good luck has turned your brain. I advise you to go home, and be bled and blistered," said Scott. "The broken neck of the auctioneer is just an unlucky coincidence." "It is my terrible destiny!" cried Charles Smythe. Wealth, wealth unbounded, and which every day some lucky chance served to increase, was now in Charles Smythe's possession—he had all of pleasure, all of luxury, excepting their enjoyment; for the weight was on his spirits, and the worm at his